Well, i guess the cat is officially out of the bag. I finally get to show you guys the game i’ve quietly been working on for the past eight months!
PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale is a new four-player fighting game developed by SuperBot Entertainment, studio presidented by Chan Park and game directored by Omar Kendall. I’ve been working in the combat design department under lead combat designer Paul Edwards.
We’ve grown into a fairly large team – with quite a few oldschool fighting game community members whose names you may recognize, such as senior combat designer Ed Ma and lead animator Tommy Ho. These guys have been in the game industry for a very long time and their experience has been a huge asset on this project.
Our goal was to make every facet of Battle Royale’s gameplay as deep, varied, polished, and accessible as possible – so that it would be fun and rewarding for anyone to pick up and play. When it comes to core combat systems and high level design decisions, i have a ridiculous amount of faith in Omar, Paul, Ed, and our team as a whole.
For more information about the first six playable characters and first four levels, please check out any of the following hands-on previews:
GT.TV | IGN | G4 | GameSpot | Kotaku | Joystiq | TotalPlayStation | USA Today
I really can’t wait to see where the fighting game community takes PSASBR when you get your hands on it this holiday season. I hope you all thoroughly enjoy playing it.
(The cat was a metaphor. He never really existed. Apologies to anyone who wandered here hoping to read about cats. Who keeps their cats in a bag?)
It’s already looking very polished, looking forward to see what other characters are in there and how the actual combat turns out. It’s a bit hard to tell how it plays from the videos, outside of the goal to build meter and land a super.
If there’s one thing you need to make sure gets into the game, it’s gotta be the “Maj jump.”
^Haha
Are they gonna have you work on any videos for its promotion, or are you off the hook now? Then again, I guess with patches/hotfixes/DLC you’re still on retainer…hmmm…
Whoa, how did this end up on SRK? They copy/pasted the whole thing.
That’s crazy. I’m like news, man. Alright then, two can play that game!
Meta!
CPS2: That would be pretty funny, but this game doesn’t need “Maj jump” for the kind of setup you have in mind.
onreload: I’m not on the hook for any promotional materials because my real focus is working on the game itself, but i’ll probably end up getting involved with that stuff in some small way towards the end. Actually if they ever ask me to take promo screenshots, you might recognize them without me having to say anything. It’s hard enough taking cool fighting game screenshots with two players on the screen – four players makes it crazy complicated.
Congrats man, I hope you do some seriously good work on this game. I’ve been talking to Omar about it recently and I’m glad all three (Ed included) are getting this once in a lifetime opportunity!
Thank you sir. That’s the way i look at it too, which is why i’ve been investing so much time and effort into my job (and also explains why it took so damn long to finish a two-minute Seth combovid). It’s a big commitment but i think the end result will be worth the sacrifice.
Btw i enjoyed your VF5FS tier list breakdown and that Diablo flashback piece. Good luck on whatever you’re currently working on at Capcom!
Good stuff Maj! Good luck with the project and may the community cherish your hard work for a long time!
Congratulations! and no need to feign surprise- of all places, SRK ought to be about “by the players, for the players”. Good to see us making some of the stuff we play.
I don’t know man, i don’t consider myself “news.” It was pretty weird to find that headline on SRK in the morning. I guess i can see it getting posted on a slow day, but it certainly isn’t something i would ever take for granted, especially this early in my career. I mean, you’ve got some experience wanting to get something posted on SRK. It’s not exactly easy even when you’re actively trying. I just wasn’t expecting it.
Hey Maj, I’ve been a fan of yours for a long time and I’m super excited for this game, I have one nagging concern though. Almost every news outlet is saying you can only KO via supers, is this true?
I really, really hope there are other methods of KOing and seeing how talented and experienced your team members are I was wondering why you guys would have limited it like that. I just want it to be fun, tactical, and an overall rewarding experience. I can’t see how limiting it to just supers for KOs could help keep it balanced if people are just focusing on their supers.
It’s funny, i had the same knee-jerk reaction when i heard that for the first time, like “There’s no way it can work with only supers scoring KOs!”
Coming from a Street Fighter background where it’s all about the lifebar, it’s hard to imagine anything different being successful. Even Smash sticks to that formula of tracking damage.
But it took less than 10 minutes of actually playing Battle Royale to completely change my mind. It’s really fun to play, it’s extremely intuitive, it’s very tactical, and it’s totally engaging. We’re obviously not making Street Fighter, but trust me, it doesn’t feel limiting. I’ve been playing the game for eight months now and it hasn’t stopped feeling rewarding.
That said, it’s still way too early to talk about what isn’t in the game. There’s still a fair amount of time between now and the day it ships. Omar and Paul aren’t afraid of taking design risks, so i’m sure we’ll continue throwing around ideas to improve PSASBR every day until it’s in your hands.
Everything can always be better and we still have a lot of work to do, but i gotta say, the game is pretty damn solid right now. (And i’m not bragging because i can’t take credit for it.)
@Maj
I have to stop being closed minded I guess haha :) I haven’t played it yet so I definitely don’t have the right to dismiss the new system, I’m really excited for the super meter system in fact. I’ve been on board with this game since it was leaked/rumored months ago, so I can’t wait to play it!! :)
@Maj
Now see, with me, I consider myself news, I am surprised all the time when I don’t make headlines for making top of the weekly leaderboards. I mean people just ought to know, ya know? Maybe I should try your strategy though, I think I see what’s going on here. So I would like everyone to know: No matter how many times I’ve been asked this question time and time again, but like I always say I have NO PLANS or any desire whatsoever to run for President of the United States and I never ever imagine myself in the Oval Office at all, ever. Also, I would like to add that I would not expect to be asked to be anyone’s Vice President pick either. Just sayin.
Oh snap, you’re running for both at once? I didn’t know people could do that. You’re like the Jackie Moon of politics. If you get elected and die, our nation will plunge into chaos!
Hey when you’re Emperor of America, can you get them to make more episodes of Justified? I don’t get why we can’t have new episodes after the season finale while we’re waiting for the season premiere.
I just noticed the website for the game went online, although it looks like it might stay kind of empty for a while. Anyway i added both the PSASBR link and the SuperBot Entertainment link to the entry above, in case you guys want to check out some colorful scrolling robots.
Also VideoGamer.com has a good overview of the first six characters. Almost everything is spot-on, although some chars are way underrated! But yeah, very observant reporting.
Here are a couple of in-depth interviews that might answer a few questions:
PSASBR Gameplay Preview w/ Omar Kendall
Machinima IGDaily – Paul Edwards Interview
You’ll have to forgive them if they’re not as snappy as professional comedians appearing on Conan, but i thought both interviews turned out pretty well, all things considered. (I imagine i’d be pretty stressed out if i had to yell over a dark room full of people on camera.)
Also i like these three screenshots much better than the first batch released.
Can you talk about mechanics yet? A couple of things I’m wondering:
1. is there any hit stun increase (like smash) or deterioration (like marvel)?
2. can you tech throws?
3. is there directional influence/air control when in hitstun?
4. can you cancel moves into other moves?
5. can you combo into kill moves?
6. are kill moves blockable?
Also Sly is going to be a sitting duck unless he has some kind of dodge maneuver. The logical thing for Sly is blocking should only be disabled when Camo is activated.
Those are all good questions, but unfortunately i can’t discuss specifics yet – partly because i don’t want to get myself fired but mostly because a lot of stuff is still in flux and i don’t want to risk ruining any awesome surprises.
It seems that every fragment of information about the game gets overanalyzed from a hundred angles. With the amount of wild speculation that’s been going around, i’m hesitant to say anything that could lead to more weird expectations.
Obviously every single one of these characters has die-hard fans who really want the game to be great, and we totally get that. We truly appreciate everyone’s passion. That’s why i think it’s better to wait and see every feature in style, when it’s ready to be shown.
I mean, a lot of people work very hard every single day on every aspect of Battle Royale – every character, every level, every feature. For me to spoil any of their hard work would be disrespectful to them, but ultimately it would be inconsiderate to you.
Holding back exciting news isn’t fun at all; but you know, i don’t want to be that guy who carelessly gives away the ending to the Usual Suspects. Hope you understand.
@Maj
Hey thanks I appreciate it. I’m super excited and looking forward to trying this game out for myself!
Now that E3 has past can we get any more insight?
Um, i’m not sure. Give me a couple of days to find out, and i’ll get back to you on Monday or Tuesday if i can get permission.
By the way, did you guys catch our first official trailer?
PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale E3 Trailer
Headshots in the beginning are dope and i love the silhouettes that follow. They kind of remind me of the cutscenes in Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2, which helped me care enough about MUA2 to make a mini-combovid for it. So yeah, i’m pretty happy with how it turned out. The multimedia team did a great job!
Although i’m a little sad that it has so many dislikes – but i don’t think that has anything to do with the quality of the trailer itself. It’s unfortunate that Nintendo fans feel threatened by this game, because i think the Smash community would enjoy the hell out of Battle Royale if they gave us a fair chance. Anyway i guess we’ll just have to endure the automatic impulsive hate until PSASBR ships and people actually get to try it for themselves.
I think the fighting game community is getting more hype with each bit of info we get. It really seems the design team is keeping the competitive scene in mind (obviously making the game fun is the #1 goal). That’s way more than Nintendo ever did for smash. Nintendo went out of their way to try to sabotage the competitive aspects of the game even. So I think smash vets, and fans of platform fighters are excited that we might finally have a “worthy” competitive game.
Thank you sir, that’s good to hear. Was there anything specific that you wanted to know about?
Guess i’ll start with truendymion’s questions and provide as much information as i can. Keep in mind that everything i’m about to say could change over the next few months, but this is where we’re at right now with Battle Royale.
1) There’s no hitstun increase like Smash, because it wouldn’t really add anything to our game engine or resolve any problems that we might face. There’s no hitstun deterioration like Marvel, because although it’s a convenient system, none of us really like the idea of basic reactions changing halfway through a combo. We feel it’s better to keep attack behavior consistent as much as possible, so that players can move combo pieces around freely.
2) Currently throws are untechable, but this is a perfect example of something that could easily change over the next few weeks as we buckle down on playtesting for balance. Judging by the current state of the game, i personally happen to think that we can get away with oldschool untechable throws. But it’s not a terribly difficult feature to add, so we’ll see how it goes.
3) There’s no air control during hitstun, but i’m sure you’ve seen characters automatically flipping out of air reactions to regain mobility. Ed Ma has been experimenting with adding SFA3-style directional control to our automatic tech flips. You still wouldn’t be able to escape early out of true hitstun, but you’d have some control over how you recover in the air. We’re actually trying to be very careful about how our characters recoup from scary situations like air reactions, knockdowns, and things like that. You should always have a few defensive options under pressure.
4) Most characters can cancel moves into other moves, but it’s not as fomulaic as SF4’s normal -> special -> super. Canceling between attacks is much more of a character-specific feature in Battle Royale, but it’s still pretty intuitive once you actually get your hands on a character. I think you guys will have a lot of fun exploring our roster.
5) At the moment, quite a few characters can combo into their super moves in various unique ways. Everyone seems to have a different way of approaching it. Generally speaking, lvl2 supers are the easiest to combo into, but that ends up being kind of an expensive way to guarantee a single KO. There’s definitely a cost vs benefit decision to consider here, and those choices shift frequently over the course of a match.
6) All super attacks are unblockable, but as you’ve seen by now, there are many other ways to avoid them. We wanted to give people that exciting moment of figuring out a way to dodge Drake’s crumbling wall or Fat Princess’ giant chicken. I’m sure you’ll agree that having everyone stand around blocking supers would’ve led to incredibly boring gameplay. (We tried it a long time ago, and sure enough, it made us all sleepy.)
7?) Beating Sly on paper and beating Sly in a real match are two different things. He’s quite difficult to pin down! Mobility is never an issue for him and he can definitely hold his own in a fight. But really, what makes me happy is that we’ve got creative designers like Ray Ray Shen who come up with interesting gameplay proposals for unorthodox characters like Sly – and that Omar and Paul are willing to roll the dice on stuff like this.
At the very least, the Battle Royale community will have some extremely interesting discussions about Sly Cooper a year from now. And i think the fighting game community as a whole will benefit from those discussions.
Thanks for taking the time to answer those! It’s things like this that give me way more faith in the game than a new smash brothers would (good luck getting anyone from Nintendo to post on a blog answering questions). I had a few questions, if you can/don’t mind.
1. Obviously numbers are the easiest thing to change, and they probably will, but how do you feel about meter draining? From what I could tell in videos, throws and other various moves can drain meter, but it didn’t seem like enough to care. Why would I bother throwing someone to drain so little meter? I guess if it drained too much it would create too much “anti-fun” for the opponent, but I like the balancing act of going for meter vs denying the opponent.
2. Is there anyway to use a lower level super with higher meter? (I have level 3, want to use a level 1) I would think not, it would certainly make 1v1’s interesting. It hardly seems worth it to build up a level 3 in 1v1 so you’ll want to use your lower level supers to maximize your meter.
3. Is blocking frontal or all around the character? Does it deteriorate?
4. Air dodges? Air throws? Backwards air attacks? Short hops?
Also, not sure you have any influence over this, but PLEASE make the characters unlocked from the start for the sake of tournament play :)
Sorry for the late reply; we’ve had a crazy busy week and it isn’t over yet. Anyway i can answer a couple of your questions now and i believe the rest will be covered in an upcoming article that i’ll be sure to link here when it’s published.
1) Throws draining meter is actually a relatively recent addition to our combat system and i like it a lot as a meter denial mechanic. It’s a little tricky to balance because we have to tune multiple factors. Throws were strong even before we added this feature, so they’re quite powerful now. We also realize that losing meter isn’t an enjoyable experience for most players, so we have to take that into consideration as well. But i’ll share the specific numbers once they’re finalized and you’ll get a better sense of the thinking behind it. There’s a few other tasks that take priority at the moment, but i think we’re pretty close to locking down a good framework when it comes to throw values.
2) Currently there’s no way to perform lower level supers once you reach lvl2 or lvl3 meter, but there’s a slim chance that might change. Personally i think the current rules add an interesting layer of urgency to meter management. You have to constantly be on the lookout for great opportunities to land lvl1 supers. You can’t just max out your meter and then throw out lvl1 supers six times in a row. That seems like an undesirable scenario, especially if it overshadows the last minute of every match.
As for the character unlock stuff – it’s too early to say anything specific, but don’t worry, Omar is definitely keeping the tournament community in mind when it comes to those decisions.
We’re getting pretty close to the home stretch, so news and information updates from SuperBot and Sony will become more and more frequent soon.
Thanks for taking the time to answer. Can’t wait for the info to start coming.
Hello, I have some questions, how do you guys choose characters? do you guys have a huge list of all the Playstation characters and you choose which characters you think can work for this game? if this is the case, have you guys ever considered Prana Devil (from The Unholy War), Razorfane (from The Unholy War) and Scaler (from Scaler The Shapeshifting Chameleon) because I really want these characters in the game?
Also, I actually sent you guys at Superbot movesets for characters I want in the game (which includes the 3 above) but didn’t include circle or grab attacks since I didn’t know how the controls were structured, if you liked them and wanted to use them, would you guys create and include the circle and grab attacks?
I also created levels but didn’t mix them with other Playstation IPs so would you guys mix them with IPs if you wanted to use them?
@Maj
Hey Maj, small question but it’s also important. Can you throw items, like in SSB? I know certain items are designed to be thrown like the Hedgehog Grenade, but what about being able to just throw the Spear of Destiny?
jdude1996: I definitely appreciate your unique suggestions, but i’m not the right person to answer those questions. There’s not a whole lot i can say about character selection without unveiling some tiny detail that will fuel speculation or lead to spoilers. I don’t want to ruin any of the extensive planning that goes into character reveals, so you’ll never hear any IP-related or content-related news from me. It’s just not my place to talk about that stuff and i’m not interested in becoming the center of attention for that reason. Sorry sir! You might have more luck on the PS Community Forum or the PS Blog the next time you see a PASBR article on there.
schobeleth: Currently the only items that can be thrown are Projectile Weapons like the Hedgehog Grenade. The Spear of Destiny can’t be thrown. What do you guys think of that?
Being able to throw items like weapons I think put them over the top into banned territory in Smash. On top of random spawns at random locations and variance in power. You could argue that it gave characters more options and tools for edge guarding and so on.
However, in a game with no health, you can’t really make the same comparisons. Maybe it isn’t that big of an impact? Perhaps they could even drain meter? Maybe drain more meter based on how much “ammo” is left (or how many swings are left in the spear for example, if the game uses such a thing) so you could chose between using the item as is, or throwing it early for more drain or something.
Speaking of items, do they spawn at random locations at random times?
Hi Maj, I’m really REALLY looking forward to this game, and I’ve been trying to learn as much info about it as I can. But one thing about this game’s really been bugging me and I hope you can help me out.
I’ve heard in multiple interviews that this game will support “Joystick” controls, but it’s not exactly clear what that means. Omar Kendall said it in the G4 interview you linked in comment #17, and also another SuperBot developer from this GameSpot interview (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7frU16Vmb1A) mentioned joysticks while talking about customizable controls.
When they say “joysticks” are they talking about the fight sticks used at most (if not all) Street Fighter tournaments? The ones usually made my Mad Catz?
Yes, i believe Omar was talking about compatibility with traditional fighting game arcade sticks. There was supposed to be some sort of announcement about that, but apparently it got postponed. Anyway i’m sure you’ll hear something more official about joystick controllers soon.
Hey, thanks for replying to my previous questions, I appreciate it, but I have a couple more questions for the game.
1) When can we expect to get story mode details for Playstation All Stars Battle Royale?
2) Can you give me a rough estimate on when the next character reveal is?
Evo is right around the corner. Omar said they would be there. I’m sure character reveals will be there too.
ok thanks
@Maj
Nice, thanks for clearing that up!
That’s right, Toro and Heihachi are going to be in PlayStation All-Stars! Check out their reveal trailers for previews of their attacks and supers.
If you’re at Evo2k12 today, come by our booth to try out the game! And if you don’t have any pools matches at 2pm, stop by our PASBR panel hosted by Omar, Paul, Tommy, Ed, Clockw0rk, and me. I believe it’ll be streamed on the Evo 2012 Live Broadcast page, under Panels & Interviews. Should be fun!
Well, how’d it look on stream? Did you guys think it was an interesting panel? It went by so fast, it’s all kind of a blur in my mind. At least nothing went horribly awry, as far as i can remember – so that’s nice.
It seemed natural for us to let Omar handle most of the questions, because he’s such an amazing, insightful speaker. I’m glad i got to be there though, just to be a part of it. Making that combo video with Clockw0rk was pretty fun too. I hope you all enjoyed it.
The panel was excellent! It really affirms that you guys care about the competitive aspect of the game.
The combo video was excellent, at first I didn’t like “infinite protection” that was explained. After watching the video and thinking about it more, it is needed to prevent the game from turning into a touch of death contest and creates more opportunities for resets and mix ups (in the platform fighter sense). The positioning and wall bounces were great too. Can you wall tech like in smash?
I wish the questions the audience asked were more geared towards the actual game itself and not smash comparisons and other PR stuff that you can’t answer/already answered, but oh well.
Are you willing to answer more questions about game mechanics in these comments? If not, where is the best place that you guys would read feedback? Frankly the PlayStation forums are kind of garbage and filled mostly with character wishes, which doesn’t interest me.
@Maj
Hey Maj. Thanks again for answering my question before. And the EVO panel was very informative and interesting to watch; thanks to you and the SuperBot team for that!
But there’s one thing about the Super system that I’m still a little unsure about. It’s about how quickly the bar fills up super.
Is Super bar growth linear? For example, if it takes 50 hits to fill up level 1, will it take another 50 hits to fill up level 2, and another 50 hits to fill up level 3 (150 hits total)?
Or is it exponential? As in, if it takes 50 hits to fill up level 1, will it take another 100 hits to fill up level 2, and another 150 hits to fill up level 3 (300 hits total)? Similar to how an XP bar works in online shooter (or PS3’s Trophies), where it takes longer to reach Level 3 than it does to reach Level 2?
Kind of a long question, I know, but I’d really appreciate it if you could clear this up a bit. I don’t think it’s been super clear and it’s causing a little confusion on the forums. Thanks!
Thank you sirs, i’m glad you liked our Evo panel. Most of us are new to that sort of thing, so obviously we have a lot to learn. If we get another opportunity like that, i’m sure it’ll run even smoother next time.
mcw00ty: Haha i have a lot of fun with wall bounce tricks, as i’m sure you can tell from this crazy Kratos combo. Battle Royale doesn’t have wall tech, because the situations where you can follow up a wall bounce in a real match are fairly uncommon. I can imagine it happening in 1v1 on small stages, but you’d have to be thinking really far ahead to plan it.
IceCK44: Right now, every character’s super costs are defined individually, based on how many kills they tend to earn. Omar alluded to this during the panel. It’s possible for a character to have a relatively inexpensive lvl1 super and a very expensive lvl2 super, which would make it seem like earning a lvl2 super takes longer than expected. Consequently, if you perform a lvl1 super when that character is almost at lvl2 meter, you’d be left with another full lvl1 super, plus an extra chunk of AP which represents the additional cost of that character’s lvl2 super. Don’t worry if this mathematical stuff sounds confusing, because the system feels very intuitive when you actually play the game. Once you start becoming familiar with your character, you’ll notice your lvl2 AP meter charging slower than your lvl1 AP meter, and you’ll immediately say “Oh that must mean this character has an expensive lvl2 super!”
I’m not exactly sure what the best place would be to ask questions like this, but right now your best bet would be reaching out to @SuperBotEnt on twitter. That’s probably where you’ll get the quickest direct responses.
@Maj
Awesome, that actually sounds awesome! Thanks again for answering my question!
Cole looks super fun to play. Any chance that we will see more combo videos with the new characters? :)
Cole actually has some crazy unique combos that i’d love to record, but i’m not sure when we’ll get to make another combo video. It’s getting down to the wire so working on the game has been taking up all my time, and Clockw0rk has been swamped with media obligations.
Whenever things lighten up, we’d love to make another video like the one we made for Evo. The release date feels like it’s right around the corner though. October 23rd is only three months away!
Anyway what i’m trying to say is that i can’t promise anything, but we’ll try. We’re definitely going to make an effort to keep uploading interesting PASBR content to the SuperBot Entertainment youtube channel, and we really appreciate the support we’ve been getting from Sony fans and the fighting game community. Thanks guys!
Well, it’s finally official – PlayStation All-Stars: Battle Royale will support arcade sticks!
http://twitter.com/superbotent/status/232885704928141314
Sorry it took so long to get this announcement out, but i learned that’s just how it goes sometimes. Thanks for your patience.
Maj, quick question: Does Sackboy have a move where he can copy another characters costume and use 1 of their moves other than his level 1 super or is it just for the level 1?